By the way, this is a very apt entry from the perspective of a concerned voter that I was last year; it is especially so since I will be running for SC this year. 

Now, I will proceed on to the canvassing for Students’ Council. I had this question that just popped up, and I thought I could have asked this to the councillors. I could have asked: “What do you think an SC should be like?” Another variation could be: “How would you describe the true essence of SC?” Many possible answers could pop up: “To cater to the welfare of the students”, “To organise fun events for the school” just to name a few examples.

Do we imagine an SC (council or councillor) to be strict, rule-abiding, fun-loving, enthusiastic, passionate, organised, serious, admirable or responsible? (The list of adjectives is non-exhaustible.)

Honestly, I felt today’s speeches by the SC nominees were disappointing on a whole. There were only a few things that they assumed (or as a matter-of-fact) that the SC should/could do. “I love organising events”, “I think that I have the ability to lead”, “I am able to hone my leadership skills”, “I want to know everyone” just to state a few quotes. Yijin’s idea of the IP SC “being the bridge between the IP and the college” sounded interesting, and Qianyu’s idea of having a prom was 50% decent – at the least, it sounded attractive for a while. Jastine’s speech was creative, but unnecessary, because it did not emphasise on why people should vote for him and, like many nominees, tend to focus on grabbing attention, which should not have been the emphasis.

I think a good speech for an SC canvassing should consist of:
a) An introduction to who you are
b) Qualities that you have that makes you the best candidate for SC
c) Things that you can do for the IP (primary) and college (secondary & optional) when you are in the SC
d) Things that you hope to see after your tenure in SC (in yourself as well as in the IP)
e) As a matter of fact, “Please vote for me for SC because (insert stuff that you have mentioned in (b) and/or (c) to reiterate)!” or any other variations like “I am the choice, (insert slogan)!”

This template should be adequate for a speech 2 to 3 minutes long. Attention catchers should be:
a) Slogans, not long stories. People remember phrases better than stories, unless it is part of a joke that was (vaguely) heard before.
b) Forceful delivery, with emphasis, of key words (not an exaggerated one of course)
c) Reiteration, to remind people of what you have been talking about

And here’s a not-to-do list:
a) Monotone
b) Start off your story with a joke (might help to plug one, but in the middle)
c) Distracting hand gesticulation
d) Start off with “I know, after x speeches you might be bored” or “I know I am the xth person to speak” as x tends to infinity (ok, ignore the last 5 words if you want to, but we’ll be meeting those in differentiation). Do not directly grab their attention, spring up a surprise.
e) As I told my fellow VIPer sitting beside me, “Do you know the type of mechanical pencil that, when you shake, will allow the pencil lead to come out? ___ should not shake their microphone as if the wire will grow longer.” In short, speak into the microphone – ask for a stand if necessary.

Some things that can make the whole canvassing better:
a) Draw lots to decide who would go first, second, third and so on.
b) Question & answer session: a slip of paper should be given to people who want to ask questions. This prevents unnecessary machine-gunning of questions (as we might say, “@#$%!!! _______ ask like free liddat”) and consequently less waste of time.
c) More voting boxes, thanks.
d) A tea party for VIP students to interact with SC nominees (possible but might not be feasible)
e) My GSE report thank you very much. Just joking. (=

And with that, I end my ultra-long blog entry. I shall redo my Trigonometry 5 assignment.

I shall take into account these points while formulating my speech. Thanks to myself from a year ago!

I had some random inspiration to blog something about self-motivation and maybe give my views on the canvassing for the Students’ Council elections.

The thing about self-motivation is that it must come from within you. With self-motivation, one can fuel himself (”him” as a neutral gender) over a longer distance. You may, at times, need others to motivate you, but what if that motivation is gone? Who will be left to fuel you? Self-motivation gives you a lot of power, but it is difficult to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain it throughout a long period of time.

To achieve a state where you are able to self-motivate, you should condition your mindset – tell yourself: “I must do this.” A better alternative would be: “I want to do this – I like it so much, when I do it I don’t feel like doing work.” That was a quote from Confucius – “Do what you like doing best and you will not feel like you are working at all.” (This is a very good quote to abide by!) Therefore, the first step should be to tell yourself that you like doing it. This form of motivation, I will term dangling-carrot self-motivation.

It might help to start off your journey of self-motivation by setting some tangible rewards (a 10-minute break or a small snack for example) – then as you continue to employ this strategy, do away with the physical reward and instead aim for some psychological and emotional reward – “I am doing this because it gives me some emotional satisfaction.” (Refer to my post on the (10+2)*5 procrastination hack by Merlin Mann.)

I can testify that the method works, even though I jumped straight into aiming for a psychological reward. I feel a sense of satisfaction when I do my extension for my mathematics assignments (I started doing so since the start of this year), partly because mathematics is one of my favourite subjects, and also partly because I am aiming to score well in mathematics – both will consequently lead to some form of emotional satisfaction.

From this year, I resolved to play less and do my work before I play. The reward was: firstly, a more organised, on-task self; and secondly, better grades. Looking at my grades last year, I resolved to improve on them as I felt there was room for improvement, and hence the self-motivation regime.

Another method of deriving self-motivation is to remove all (or nearly) all forms of distractions (present and potential) so that you can stay focused on the task at hand. I will term this forced self-motivation. This may work because without any distractions, you will not be tempted to do something other than the task at hand. This is a good method, but it might compromise the end results as you are forced to complete the task, and you might not have put in your best in accomplishing the task.

There’s another form of self-motivation which I will name chain self-motivation. In this case when you accomplish some task and achieve some self-satisfaction, you might be motivated to do better because you like it, or that you want to get more satisfaction. This should preferably be combined with dangling-carrot self-motivation because DCSM is the starting fuel, while CSM will serve as a motor that will move you all the way. In short, this is a way of sustaining the self-motivation in you.

And I shall end my essay there. It was kind of impromptu, and hopefully it wasn’t too long-winded.

I was thinking about how commercialised sports have become. The focus has shifted from physical excellence to competitive excellence. Competitiveness has been rooted in all sports all along – sports were created to determine whether who/which team was more physically advantaged, dominant and stronger. However, this friendly competition has turned into hungry battles for trophies, and these battles repeat themselves years after years.

All because of money.

Ever since sports began being professionalised, there has been no turning back. People are paid to play. People are paid to keep fit. People are paid to fight these battles that they know they should never lose or they will face repercussions. But it is this professionalism that has raised the overall standard of play.

Football clubs began to become commercial companies, earning their keep from this competitive nature of humans. The spectators are enjoying the results. The clubs begin to charge these spectators for entry.

The players themselves, instead of becoming true pursuers of the sport, become puppets and commodities, signing contracts and being bought/sold. If you’re good, you’ll get a higher pay, or set off to a better club; if you’re on the slide, you are sold for a cheap price. Is it possible to stay loyal to one club for a life? On one hand you have to be able to withstand the various temptations (money, game experience (especially if you’re playing for a lower league club)), and yet on the other hand you have to do your best to stay.

Will continue on this post tomorrow. My workload is getting heavier by the day ><

In my opinion, a good leader is one who is able to relate to people – that I cannot do very well, but I’m willing to try. To be able to serve the school, one must be able to understand the school and its components – the student body. What is a school without its students? But what, then, are students if they are not given the chance to lead? Hence, the term student leadership arises - at the micro scale we have class committees, subject representative; at the macro level we have the prefects, the councillors to lead the school.

The teachers in a school can only cater to (at least) the educational and pedagogical welfare of the students, and usually do not have time to take care of welfare in the school context (this refers to student’s all-round development, including recreation and relaxation). This responsibility would then fall onto the student leaders – specifically, the SCs. I still remember one notable contribution by one recent batch of councillors – the Student’s Lounge, with movie screenings, a pool table, a dartboard and a room where students can play PS2 games.

Leadership is not only about bringing positive changes in the school environment, but also growth in the student body. For that, I believe an open 2-way communication system is vital. By this, I mean that students and student leaders alike will not be afraid to share their views on how to improve students’ lives or the school environment. Student leaders also have to understand the dynamics of the student body – how they would respond to certain changes, how they react to existing infrastructure in the school – in order to administer suitable corrections, changes or introductions that would improve students’ lives.

However, leadership is not about serving and giving – there are lessons that can be learnt that can benefit the student leader themselves. People usually do not know how to garner respect from others, usually thinking (superficially) that money, good looks or good grades are enough. As the old adage goes, for others to respect you, you must respect others first. Leaders will show that they care not only about the results of a project but also the welfare of his team along the way – by rendering tasks to the abled, by helping people through difficulties, by working through obstacles as a team and not abandoning your members at any stage.

Committment, perseverance, time management, confidence and decisiveness are also other traits that a leader must have and will be able to refine as a leader.

We can also see that new forms of media began to emerge. The invention of the printing press saw the birth of the newspaper, the invention of the transistor saw the birth of the radio and the cathode ray tube brought about the first televisions. More recently, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which slowly developed into the Internet that we know of today.

From this we can see that the media first developed in terms of its reach – then when the maximum possible reach was hit (and restrained due to many factors, more commonly technology, financial strength and maybe the mindsets of people) alternate forms of media began to emerge.

However, in a conversation that I had with Shannon, he claims that the media shows relatively “unimportant” stuff that does not pertain to the local or regional scene, and instead showing more news from the international scene. Some questions may sprout:

1. Why should we care for people in other parts of the world when we do not even care enough for the people around us?
2. Why should we care for people in other parts of the world when incidents that occur around us have more geographical significance and thus we should accord priority and attend to these first.

Shannon continued on by saying why our media does not report news on people who urinate in lifts and yet report news on terrorist attacks. Shannon also talked about fictional news, which I will touch on later.

Back to my questions. To the two questions that I posed (answers are targeted not at specific questions but are general answers to both):

• There is an increased global awareness due to the global reach of modern media.
• Besides, there is little chance that a whole population will be interested in helping the people around us – same applies in cases of rendering aid to other countries. Additionally, there are people who are selfish and care for self-interests only.
• Geographical significance does not necessarily equate to urgency – the scale and magnitude of the incident does.
• Some local problems do not have immediate – or rather, effective – solutions that can be undertaken. Also, the public may not be able to render help in the right form. (For example, helping the poor get out of the poverty cycle – this requires implementation of government policies to be effective, even though donations by the public may seem to be an immediate relief measure; contrast this with the seemingly much easier form of providing relief to other countries by donating necessities.)

With regards to why some news are shown instead of others:

• Degree of impact – some news are more likely to draw attention than others. A murder case, for example, will stay in the media for much longer than a case of theft.
• Importance of dissemination – some important news (especially those regarding government policies) may be important and needs to be spread among the public as fast as possible (e.g. the infamous 2% rise in GST (again) and the implementation of policies to offset effects of that increase).

In fact I retorted to Shannon, “What the heck is the media for if local news are not reported at all?” Despite the fact that the media allows us to know more, we don’t have to know everything.

Shannon also raised an interesting point about fictional/manipulated news. Imagine this scenario:

1. A terrorist attack occurs somewhere in Singapore.
2. Witnesses of the incident are silenced (i.e. they do not spread the news).
3. The media does not report it either.

Shannon says that the media should not report it at all since it will cause a big hooha out of it. “Ignorance is bliss”, as the old adage says. At first thought I would agree with him, since we will not be able to render help immediately (unless we are at the scene), and then people will start pointing fingers at who will be the mastermind.

In the case where the media actually reports the incident on the news, Shannon claims that one terrorist group will come out and claim responsibility (regardless of whether they were responsible) since some terrorist groups are out to get publicity of the group and their aims; on the other hand, I stood my ground by saying that terrorists do execute plans in line of their aims and goals, but will tend not to get in the way of law. Shannon followed up his argument by saying that since terrorists are out to get publicity, the media would be one cause of subsequent terrorist attacks (this rests on the claim that terrorists execute attacks to stike fear and destabilise peace, which may be their goals). I did not agree, and I said that the media is not the catalyst of subsequent terrorist attacks. I reasoned that terrorists groups would have different agendas (this would not exclude Shannon’s scenarios) and that some terrorist attacks that may look like follow-up attacks by first glance may be executed by a different group (also to strike fear and destabilise peace).

In such a case, should the media report a terrorist attack on the news? Stay tuned for Part II.